Talk:Babie Doły, Pomeranian Voivodeship

Babie Doły - the legend of the buried soldiers

Apparently this event occurred at this Babie Doły, here 54.581111°N 18.539722°E / 54.581111; 18.539722 on the coast about 20km north of Gdańsk. The equivalent Polish article makes it clear the title of the place is "Babie Doły". An article needs to be started for this Babie Doły as this story is referenced and needs to be told.

Buried alive for six years

In June 1951, a pair of German soldiers from the Wehrmacht were reportedly found alive after being trapped inside a military bunker at Babie Doły for six years. They were the only survivor from a group of six who had been inside an underground storehouse when the entrance was dynamited by the retreating German Army. The survivors were discovered by workmen who had been ordered to clear away rubble at the site. One of the survivors told the rescuers they had survived on food from the supply depot and rain water that had trickled inside. It emerged two men had committed suicide shortly after becoming trapped, while another two had died of natural causes. The fifth man died from a heart attack shortly after being rescued. On June 25, 1951 Time reported:

From Warsaw last week came a story of two more curious survivors of World War II. A six-foot Nazi soldier with a beard reaching to his knees, and another who soon dropped dead of a heart attack, turned up in the village of Babie Doly, 20 miles from Gdynia, claiming that they had been trapped for six years in an underground storehouse. The bearded one, no mean storyteller, gave a detailed account to Poland's Communist authorities, generally no mean storytellers themselves: during the German retreat in 1945, he and five other German soldiers had been looting the store, when German demolition bombs destroyed its entrance and entombed them. Two of the trapped men committed suicide; another two died. The two remaining buried their comrades in piles of flour, lived on the vast stores of food in the bunker, washed in schnapps to conserve the small supply of water which seeped through cracks in the concrete walls. When Polish workers cleared the rubble from the shelter's entrance, they crawled out.

The last survivor was taken to a hospital at Danziger where he was said to have made a full recovery, according to authorities in Communist Poland. However, he then disappeared, without even his name being known.

The story went on to inspire the novel Le Blockhouse by French author, Jean-Paul Clébert. It was made into a film starring Peter Sellers in 1973.